May already. I have been looking forward to the start of this month for a while, because it marked Amy, Freddie and me heading away for a week near Carcassonne in southern France. There has been a few days of rain here, which I will try to bring back to Essex with me. It would be more welcome there than here right now.
It is good to get away, change the scenery, and have proper time with the family in the middle of the year.
What has surprised me, honestly, is how easy I have found it on this occasion. My workload is as heavy as it has ever been, possibly the heaviest. By rights I should have spent the first three days checking my phone. I have not.
There is a chance that my mind has simply decided I needed the break and made it easier to take. I have felt less effective over recent weeks, and a week away may be exactly what that signal was. But I think there is more to it than that, and it is worth writing about because I know plenty of farming families will recognise the feeling I am describing. There may even be a few people muttering “a chance would be a fine thing” at this point, and that is fair too.
I have always struggled with going away. The worry is not really about the work itself. It is the sense that I should be on hand if something goes wrong, and the guilt of not being around if it does. Many of you will know exactly what I mean.
What has changed for me, I think, is the team.
The business has developed in a way that means one person being absent for a short stretch genuinely has less impact than it used to. There are more people involved than there were, and there is more versatility across the roles. That is part of it.
I do not want anyone to read this and think we are sitting on more staff than we need, because we are not. We are still light on the farm side. So the comfort of going away is not about numbers.
It is about who is in the team rather than how many people are in it. The ability, the experience, and the morale we have around us at the moment give me the highest confidence I have ever had that the place will run perfectly well for a week without me.
If you are not in that position, I would gently challenge what is in the way. Is it a numbers problem? Is it a confidence problem in those covering for you? Is it that you have full-time team members or temporary cover who could do more than you let them, if you stepped back enough to let them?
Worth a thought, even from a sun lounger.
Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.